Senator Susan Collins, who's emerged as a leading critic of the decision to Mirandize the bomb plot suspect, raised no concerns about his handling while being briefed on Christmas Day about his capture on a private call with a top Homeland Security official, a source familiar with the conversation tells me.
The call was confirmed to me by Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Bobby Whithorne, who declined to confirm details.
The claim about Collins' silence comes after Obama counterterror chief John Brennan made big news yesterday by claiming that four other top GOP Congressional officials were similiarly told that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was being held in "FBI custody," prompting no objections from the Republican leaders.
I first reported on Sen. Collins' response to the President's weekly address here and in other posts.
In a statement sent to Sargent from Kevin Kelley, her press person, Collins said:
To equate the brief conversation on non-secure telephones between Senator Collins and Deputy Secretary Jane Lute to a comprehensive briefing on the detention and questioning of Abdulmutallab is preposterous. In informing Senator Collins of Abdulmutallab's arrest, Secretary Lute appeared to know very few details.
It is not, however, surprising that the Deputy Secretary knew so little about the detention of Abdulmutallab since we now know that the Department of Justice did not consult with the Secretary of Homeland Security or apparently the Deputy Secretary on how the terrorist should be handled.
It is offensive, to Senator Collins and the American people, that the Obama Administration is more concerned with political spin to cover a mistake than with taking the actions urgently needed to improve our nation's security. Clearly, the Administration is trying to divert attention from the fact that it interrogated a foreign terrorist for less than one hour before the Justice Department unilaterally decided to Mirandize him and he stopped talking.
Senator Collins calls on the Obama Administration to immediately change its policies and ensure consultation with top intelligence and security officials before treating the capture of the next foreign terrorist as only a civilian law enforcement matter. She will continue to press for her bipartisan legislation that mandates this consultation.
As Sargent notes, the statement does NOT say which details are omitted, but he has been told that Collins was not told Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody.
More importantly, the statement does not say whether Collins was given a more through briefing subsequent to the Christmas Day phone call, one that came before her video of 30 January. I have asked the White House if she had received any such additional briefing(s).
While I understand the desire that many people have for them, I am not a supporter of hate crimes laws. To me, a crime is a crime, no matter what the motivation for it is. It is important to differentiate between 'hate speech' and hate crime,' as speech - as offensive as it may be - is a protected right, unless it is used in conjunction to motivate others to commit crimes.
The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor Michigan, this morning filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., challenging the constitutionality of the recently-enacted federal Hate Crimes Act. The Act criminalizes so-called "bias" crimes motivated by a person's "actual or perceived" "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" and thus elevates those engaged in certain deviant sexual behaviors to a special, protected class of persons under federal law.
Not to be a stickler, but the actual law in question is the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, named after Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was tortured and murdered in Wyoming because of his sexual orientation, and James Byrd, a black man who was dragged behind a truck and decapitated by white supremacists.
There is a reason why the full name of the law was omitted, as you will see below the fold:
I don't believe in a 'no new tax pledge.' It's too simplistic, it's pandering, and given the track record of most politicians who take a 'no new tax pledge,' I don't think the public even believes it. It's one of the reasons why the public has become so cynical and distrusting of its government.
Does that mean I want to raise taxes? Absolutely not, especially not during a recession when so many people I've talked to across the state are hurting, when too many people are out of work or struggling to pay their bills, and so many small businesses are closing their doors.
We can't continually raise taxes to pay for services, as one of my opponents has proposed, but neither can we be fooled into thinking that we can just cut our way to prosperity. What we need is a change in the way Augusta does business because the old ways aren't working.
As for a 'no new tax pledge,' frankly, I'm more concerned with the old taxes, the ones we're paying right now - how do we lower Maine's overall tax burden, raise the incomes of hard hit Mainers, make Maine more competitive and create more jobs? Who is holding Augusta accountable for making sure every penny of taxpayers' money is being well spent today? Does anybody really know if we're getting the most bang for the buck?
Why aren't all the candidates taking that pledge?
I think Maine voters deserve more than cheap political gimmicks. I've heard over and over from folks that they're sick and tired of politics as usual and they are ready for real reform. I am too. People want to hear serious ideas for a change from each candidate, and they're looking for someone with the experience and courage to carry them out. That's why I'm running for Governor.
Instead of an empty pledge, I will give voters a real commitment - a clear set of goals for my first term in office. And if after four years they think I haven't made enough progress in achieving these goals, they can vote me out.
We impose learning results on our students; it's time to require results from our elected officials too.
So here's my pledge:
• I pledge to create 50,000 new jobs throughout Maine, across all 16 counties. I'll do that by taking effective steps to lower the cost of energy; to dramatically expand and make affordable health care coverage available to all Maine people; to vastly improve our education system with greater use of technology and innovation; to bolster our small family businesses that are the backbone of Maine's economy.
• I pledge to turn around this state. To make sure every taxpayer dime is being spent wisely and is fully accounted for.
• I pledge to end the era blue ribbon commissions and task force studies that go nowhere in Augusta. I will hold a summit at the beginning of my term to map out the strategy, priorities and direction of our state government - and then take decisive action, with proper structures in place to assure accountability, monitoring and transparency as we move forward.
• I pledge to hire only qualified, capable, experienced people in my cabinet - no political payoffs, no cronyism.
These are not empty promises made for a 30 second TV commercial. I've begun to lay out my specific and detailed plans to achieve every one of these very serious commitments, and will continue to expand on them in the months ahead as I continue to campaign across the state. (See Maine Rising at www.RosaForMaine.com)
To only address the issue of new taxes in Maine completely misses the point. We will breathe new life into our economy by making Maine a more attractive and affordable place to live and do business by growing jobs, lowering the cost of doing business and making sure we have an efficient, well-managed state government. And I pledge to never use tired campaign gimmicks because Maine people deserve better -much better.
---Rosa Scarcelli
In the NYTimes, Paul Krugman write that America is not yet lost, although GOP obstructionists in the Senate are sending our nation the way of 18th Century Poland.
Maine is one of eight states with no exception to "at will" employment law, which allows employers to fire employees without citing a reason. Employees can file complaints with the Maine Human Rights Commission if they believe they have been discharged for reasons of gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age. But if the employer is not found to have fired the employee for any of those reasons, the action is legal.
In his book "Can They Do That?" Lewis Maltby describes the sorts of things for which employees have been fired. One of the cases he cites is that of Lynne Gobbell. During the 2004 election season, she put a "Kerry for President" bumper sticker on her car. Her boss saw it and said she could "either work for John Kerry or work for me," Mr. Maltby writes. She refused to remove the sticker and was fired immediately.
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Sweeping change may not be needed, so that firing a bad employee becomes difficult and costly. But some modest measures might be taken, Mr. Maltby said. One is to make it illegal for employers to fire employees for anything they did in their private life (with some exceptions). Another reasonable step is to require that a warning be given before terminating an employee.
The logical group to champion these changes is unions; just as they won child labor and workplace safety protections for all workers, not just their members, they should take on this effort.
Maine is putting together a strong application for $75 million or more potential funding for Maine through the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top competition.
In order to be successful, however, Maine must pass legislation that does three things or we will not be eligible for the funds.
• Allow and encourage innovative public schools. Gov. Baldacci and I supported legislation last year that would allow charter schools under strict conditions.
The bill came closer to passage than previous charter school proposals in Maine, but still failed.
Rather than fight that battle again with predictable odds, we are working to establish "innovative public schools" with charter-like flexibility, but run by public school boards and with certified teachers.
• Remove the prohibition in law against linking student performance to teachers in our data systems. This is not about rewarding or punishing teachers. It is about using real data to continuously improve teacher effectiveness.
• Adopt national Common Core standards to provide high and consistent expectations for our students.
With these elements in place, and our history of innovation, we will be strong contenders. And this is why we have waited until Round Two, due June 1, to file our application.
A reader sent along this opinion piece from State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois, project funds aplenty; none for city schools, detailing why many of that city's school projects are not moving forward:
There isn't a single dollar for the district in last year's $29 billion state capital improvements bill. Why didn't the district get anything at the same time hundreds of school improvement or construction projects elsewhere in Illinois were funded?
As a result of the cuts to the federal stimulus, the Springfield School District lost out on $6.4 million in funding in 2009, while Ball-Chatham lost $239,700, according to an analysis of proposed stimulus spending produced by ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization.
This is not an issue just for school districts in Illinois, but for our entire nation. And as the Journal-Register notes, one person is responsible for it:
Members of Congress seemed to think that the $792 billion bill, instead of, say, a $1 trillion piece of legislation, would somehow provoke less outrage. Politics mattered more than getting the right mix of spending and tax cuts to get the economy going again.
At the behest of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, all of the funding for school construction was cut from the final version. A weak compromise allowed states to use money that they received to stabilize their budgets to instead repair existing schools. There was no money for new school construction, despite $127 billion to $268 billion worth of need nationally, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
As I've long argued, rebuilding America's infrastructure is about much more than creating jobs; done properly, it would leave a solid foundation on which the economies for the next three or four generations would rest.
But this requires long-term vision, something that some members of Congress are sorely lacking.
In political news from around the Pine Tree State:
We missed this segment of Countdown with Keith Olbermann this past week, in which he debunks the claims made by Republicans (including Sen. Susan Collins) regarding the Christmas Bomber and how the Obama adminsitration is treating terrorism suspects (h/t Collins Watch):
Update: On Meet the Press this morning, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said he briefed four GOP members of Congress on Christmas night regarding Abdulmatallab, including Sen. McConnell, and that "None of those individuals raised any concerns with me."
So in his speech to the Heritage Foundation, McConnell either forgot that briefing or he was lying to score political points. And how is it that Sen. Collins wasn't told about this by McConnell?
At the very least, McConnell let Collins put forth her response video knowing full well that he had not objected to the way the administration was handling the case. Why did he let her do it?
While delegation members generally agree the policy should be reviewed, Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe take a more cautious approach than Democratic Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree.
"I support the president's proposal to have the Pentagon do an analysis of the implications and consequences of changing the policy," said Collins, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I do believe the policy needs to be reconsidered, but I recognize there are a lot of consequences that the Pentagon wants time to figure out."
Collins acknowledged that society has changed since President Bill Clinton signed the policy into law in 1993. During that time, she said, "many of our NATO allies have revised their rules to allow openly gay men and lesbians to serve, and they have done so without it having a negative effect that opponents fear."
Pingree, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said a change is overdue. She backs a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
"Frankly, the sooner we do it and the less painful we make it, the better off the military is to move forward," she said. "We do everything we can to recruit young people into the military and then we spend millions of dollars discharging them - not because they have not performed their duty, but because someone 'outs' them."
Pingree said nearly 14,000 gay and lesbian soldiers have been discharged from the military and untold numbers have been lost to the armed services because they refuse to enlist because of the rule.
Perhaps it is a consequence of our time that "we the people" allow our politics and elected representatives to desert a core service to our society. Public education in the United States is a failure and it now primarily exists in a netherworld of directionless drifting and woeful defunding. A lack of commitment with an articulated vision is not expressed nor supported by any current stakeholders. American education is a ship of cut spars, with failing systems, anchorless, and drifting just prior to sinking.
For decades, the primary focus of education has not been improved evolution of the delivery of knowledge to propel our society forward but rather the shedding of educational concerns to pare down to a focus on the mechanics of funding. This is not to say that there has not been lip service and limp action using the language of caring about education; there is a wealth of such activity and some of it is genuine in its concern. But by and large all the talk about concentrating resources in the classroom, no child left untested, charter schools, and other varied "pop" education chatter have been driven by a desire to live (fund) within our means that we have decided, by the manner in which we prioritize our expectations, as being meager. We are starving education and are talking as if it were not so. "Putting our money where our mouth is" appears not to be a challenge we willingly rise to meet.
Civilian nuclear power requires uranium enriched to about 3%. Weapons grade uranium needs to be enriched to 90%.
The BBC Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne, reporting from London, says Mr Ahmadinejad's announcement crosses a significant red line.
Iran says it wants to supply a research reactor with highly enriched uranium following the breakdown of the international deal to provide fuel for it.
But some Western analysts say Iran does not possess the technical know-how to make fuel rods for the reactor, our correspondent says, and Western countries fear this could be a stepping stone towards the manufacture of weapons-grade material.
It will take several days to dig out the nation's capitol, as over two feet of snow fell over t he region, with some areas reporting over three feet. The WaPo has a series of articles here.
Mullen's heartfelt, plain-spoken testimony gave perfect expression to the nation's own slow but inexorable progress on the issue. He said he had "served with homosexuals since 1968" and that his views had evolved "cumulatively" and "personally" ever since. So it has gone for many other Americans in all walks of life. As more gay people have come out - a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 - so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.
But that's not the whole explanation for the scant pushback in Washington to Mullen and his partner in change, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. There is also a potent political subtext. To a degree unimaginable as recently as 2004 - when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people - there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen's testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: "I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind."
Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of "don't ask" would lead to gay demands for "special rights." Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath.
The Hill reports that a Democratic senator says Shelby holds should spell end for earmarks. Shelby, a Republican senator from Alabama, has placed a blanket hold on more than 60 nominees in an effort to secure a contract for Airbus/Northrup, that would bring work to his state.
Nodding at the much-discussed question of whether this speech would make Palin the "leader" of the Tea Party movement, she said that the activists did not have a "king or queen." At the same time, she called for "contested primaries," calling them a strength of democracy - nodding at her fairly controversial endorsements of Hoffman and Rand Paul.
Palin swung quickly and heavily to foreign policy, with a litany of attacks on Obama - from his "personality"-based diplomacy to giving "Constitutional rights" to "homicide bombers," using a term that's rarely heard outside of Fox News, where she is a contributor.
When she moved back to domestic policy, Palin delved again and again into stories that are familiar to political junkies and Tea Party activists. "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?" said Palin, paraphrasing a slogan made popular on Tea Party t-shirts." She mocked the stimulus package - the speech was heavy on mockery - by leaning slightly down and saying "nobody messes with Joe," quoting a comment President Obama made that has been more or less forgotten outside of Tea Party circles.
FireDogLake, the most excellent progressive blog, is asking its readers to nominate three incumbent representatives to be chosen the first Fire Dogs:
It's a rare breed of representative who stands up for progressive values and doesn't back down. That's why we want to choose members of Congress who aren't afraid to fight. We're calling them FDL Fire Dogs.
Two thousand people who hailed from their districts nominated 180 members of Congress for support from FDL Action PAC. Now you get to decide - who should we help?
I would urge you to support Maine's 1st District Represenative Chellie Pingree, of course. But for the other two? FDL does provide a handy chart that lists each district and how much it currently leans to the right.
VOTE HERE. Contest ends Wednesday, 10 February, at midnight.
The Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, sponsored by the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family, has created quite a stir. Planned Parenthood has put forth an ad of its own, one that supports a woman's right to choose, but that will not run during the game - you can watch it below.
On Democracy Now! yesterday (link), Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, had this to say:
...the purpose of Focus on the Family, which is a far right organization, in showing this ad, is not to really tell the Tebow story. I think it's really-their purpose is to try to undermine the legal right of women in this country to choose to terminate a pregnancy if they so choose. And that's, I think-again, I think the important thing is for-since millions of viewers will be watching this story, I think it's an important time to reflect on the Tebow family's-what happened there, because, again, I think it underscores a very fundamental American value, which is that women have to have the right to make decisions that can be complex, medical, moral decisions, but they have to be able to make those decisions without the government interfering and telling them what to do.
But amid talk about fiscal conservatism and the "subversive threat" of the green movement, there was also a strong undercurrent of a cultural bigotry which previously had been kept to the margins of the tea party phenomenon.
Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from Denver in Colorado who ran for president in 2008, devoted most of his opening speech on Thursday night to illegal immigration. He said the fabric of US society had been eroded by the "cult of multiculturalism", "Islamification", and large numbers of immigrants who did not want to be Americans.
In his most incendiary comment, he invoked the segregationist methods of the southern states, saying that Obama had been elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country". Southern segregationist states used to prevent black people having the vote by setting them restrictively difficult qualification tests, a historical allusion lost on few of the delegates present.
Tancredo went on to call on delegates to launch a "counter-revolution" that would "pass on our culture based on Judeo-Christian principles. Whether people like it or not, that's who we are."
That remark received a standing ovation from the audience.
Birthers and global warming deniers were also on hand.
Shelby applied the holds because of a dispute over a contract to build Air Force refueling tankers. The original deal was awarded to Northrop Grumman, which would have constructed the planes in Mobile, Ala.
But Boeing protested the award to the Government Accountability Office, which negated the deal in a report that faulted the Pentagon's selection process.
The Pentagon then reopened the competition, but Northrop has argued that it has given Boeing an unfair advantage in that process by disclosing price information to Boeing. It has threatened to pull out of the competition, and has been conducting a lobbying and public-relations campaign criticizing the competition.
Despite the rapid rise in spending on citizen initiative and people's veto ballot questions - and the proliferation of these questions - the state remains ill equipped to ensure the process works for the benefit of Maine people. Two bills being considered by the Legislature take some modest steps to change that.
LD 1690, sponsored by Rep. Seth Berry, a Democrat from Bowdoinham, and LD 1730, sponsored by Sen. John Nutting, a Democrat from Leeds, would require that organizations hired to gather petition signatures register with the Secretary of State's Office. Under LD 1690, this information would be posted online. Both bills would allow registration to be denied to those found to have violated state laws regarding signature collection. Rep. Berry's bill also clarifies that contributions to petition organizations in excess of $5,000 be disclosed to the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.
As important as these financial disclosure requirements, LD 1690 also would require the secretary of state to prepare a list of all the signatures it has declared valid on a specific question. This would make it easier for challengers to check the signatures to confirm they are valid. Currently, a group that wants to challenge the secretary's determination would have to inspect the thousands of individual petitions.
President Obama this week speaks to the unacceptable rate of of unemployment, and how small businesses are the key to getting back to work, and his proposals to help small businesses do just that. As always, the transcript of it can be found below the fold:
Maine Center for Economic Policy (MECEP) is reporting that their analysis of just part of the proposed cuts in the state budget will result in the loss of 7,000 to 10,000 jobs across the state. These losses would mainly affect some of the most needy people in Maine, at a time when they are already struggling to get by.
Although the proposed budget includes over $108 million in reductions for Medicaid, MECEP focused its analysis on the $55 million in cuts that will result in a direct loss of services for Maine people. These dollars also draw down matching Federal funds. Thus, the overall impact of a $55 million reduction in state Medicaid spending results in a total loss of $185.4 million in direct spending in the Maine economy. These cuts will have the greatest impact on long-term care in nursing homes and home health and care for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities.
The proposed cuts cited above would directly result in the loss of more than 1,200 state, municipal, and teaching jobs lost, and an additional 1,000 health care workers furloughed.
But as the analysis shows, this is just the beginning, as these losses ripple through the economy resulting in more layoffs:
The impact on jobs in health care vary based on the area affected. Cuts in spending on long term care result in the greatest impact with approximately 35.2 jobs lost for every $1 million in spending reductions. Cuts to doctors' offices and other health practitioners have the lowest multiplier, 20.5 jobs lost for every $1 million in cuts. Since the proposed cuts impact a variety of services, MECEP applied these multipliers to obtain a range of projected job losses. The reduction of $185.4 million in health care spending will result in a loss of between 3,792 and 6,519 jobs throughout the Maine economy.
In higher education, approximately 30.2 jobs are lost for every million dollars in reduced spending. The proposed $16.4 million cut in spending on higher education will result in a total loss of 495 jobs. In primary and secondary education, close to 37.2 jobs are lost for every million dollars in cuts. Thus, the proposed $73.2 million in cuts results in 2,721 lost jobs.
Based on this analysis, $275 million in cuts to health care and education will result in a loss of approximately 7,000 to 10,000 jobs.
And it is important to keep in mind how much impact these employees have on the lives of others: the visiting nurse that enables an elderly person to remain in their own home, or the teacher that has a smaller class size, thus enabling her or him to spend more time with each student.
Such cuts have a direct impact on the recipients of these services, but a large indirect affect on society as a whole.
(Take a moment and click through to read the entire piece - promoted by Gerald Weinand)
From the Augusta Insider:
Our article regarding the failed National Popular Vote proposal did not delve into the details of the two-and-half-hour floor debate. The Kennebec Journal made an attempt to, but failed drastically when they misrepresented the point legislators were trying to make.
Before delving into the KJ's error, it's worth noting, again the difference between a plurality of votes and a majority. A plurality simply means that one candidate received the most votes, whether that number is 10%, 20%, 40%, or any number in between. A majority means a candidate received 50% + one vote. For example, in the 2006 gubernatorial election John Baldacci won with 38% of the vote in a five-way race. He received a plurality, rather than a majority.
DIRIGO BLUE is available as an